Double Dare: 2 Units in San Francisco Home Featured in 'Vertigo' for Sale

Watch the opening scene of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller, "Vertigo," for a spine-tingling intro to a home with a distinctive cinematic pedigree.

Hitchcock filmed the heart-racing scene on a Nob Hill rooftop on Taylor Street in San Francisco; now two condos in the Edwardian row house are on the market -- No. 1308, the top floor covered by the "Vertigo" roof; and No. 1310, the middle floor of the three-story building.

The building is "part of film history," listing agent PattieLawton told us, though she doubts someone will buy the condo just because "Jimmy Stewart climbed on the roof." The dizzying price of San Francisco real estate also makes it implausible for a buyer to pick up a place simply due to its connection to cinema history.

Yet there's a unique story behind these residences that's impossible to deny: "Vertigo" is a mind-bending classic that some film critics have called "the best film of all time." James Stewart plays a police detective forced into early retirement because of an extreme fear of heights.

The current owners of the Taylor Street row house have completely redone the middle and top floors (the owners plan to continue living in the bottom unit). The top-floor, 1,884-square-foot unit is selling for $2.2 million and sports eye-popping (and vertigo-inducing) cityscape views. The 1,774-square-foot, middle-floor unit is priced at $2 million and has "peek-a-boo views," Lawton says.